3G tech to boost mobile commerce

Mumbai, July 31 | Updated: Aug 1 2005, 05:50am hrs

The advent of third generation technology (3G) is expected to give a boost to mobile commerce. According to industry experts, it will boost the current network speed by about eight times. However, providing innovative services to the customers will be the key to success. Value Added Services (VAS) provider Maujs chief operating officer Arun Gupta said, with the increase in the bandwidth speed, the mobile phone will emerge as an alternative payment mechanism.

In line with the speed benefit, with just a few clicks, the user can purchase a variety of products and services. Currently, the services are mostly confined to railway bookings and airline bookings. Reliance Infocomm offers to its subscribers services like ticket booking, shopping for music CD and apparels as well as banking services. For this the company has also tied-up with online shopping portals and merchants.

However, in the current situation, mobile commerce is not a big hit as the network speed is a major constraint. For the GSM subscribers GPRS is not a faster way to surf either. Since GPRS is not really mobile commerce friendly, mobile commerce is at a low level, said Bharti Cellular chief executive officer (Mumbai Circle) Jayant Khosla.

With 3G coming in, the need for the day will eventually change. By its very nature, 3G will be content driven as a result there will be a growing demand for new content. There will be a need to come up with innovative services for the end user. A lot of creativity will go towards this, said Tata Teleservices general manager (enterprise solutions) Alok Sinha.

Further, the services also need to be user friendly. Customers have to get comfortable to mobile commerce, said Reliance Infocomm president (applications and solutions group) Mahesh Prasad. With the innovative and user friendly content the operators will be all set to attract the customers. We will come out with different consumer delight products based on this 3G technology, adds Mr Khosla.